Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955

, Arthur M. Sackler Museum and Fogg Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, , High Museum of Art, Georgia, , Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, , Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, , Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Germany, , Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany

Arthur M. Sackler Museum and Fogg Museum, Harvard University Art Museums High Museum of Art, Georgia Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Germany Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany

This pioneering exhibition, organized by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, comprises approximately 220 drawings by Ellsworth Kelly from the 1948–1955 period. Many of these drawings, in which one sees Kelly working out his abstract aesthetic during formative years as a young artist in France immediately after World War II, have never been exhibited before. Many critics believe that this period is the ultimate source of all of Kelly’s later work. In this richly experimental time, Kelly evolved a vocabulary of forms and an arsenal of strategies he would return to again and again in subsequent years.

A special section of the exhibition is devoted to Line Form Color, a set of forty drawings and collages Kelly completed in 1951 for a projected book without words that was never realized. In conjunction with this exhibition, Kelly has completed the book. The Line Form Color drawings are on view in the Fogg Museum’s Straus Gallery and the remaining works in the exhibition are on view in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum’s first floor exhibition gallery.

Curated by Yve-Alain Bois, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art, Harvard University. Organized for the Harvard University Art Museums by Harry Cooper, associate curator of modern art, Fogg Art Museum.

The exhibition catalogue, written by Yve-Alain Bois and published by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, includes color reproductions of all the works in the exhibition. The slipcase edition of Line Form Color, with an essay by Harry Cooper, is published by the Harvard University Art Museums.

The exhibition is made possible with support from the Alexander S. Beal, Robert L. Beal, and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund, the Douglas Cramer Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, the Gürel Student Exhibition Fund, and Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

Exhibition Objects